And another from my first book. I've never been sure whether this one works or not. It's not really about food - it's about a narrator whose mind is failing (probably from writing too many forced sestinas) - but food is the unifying element that keeps repeating and reappearing.

There Was a Woman Once

Unavoidably, in Delft, Delft blue;
and Bruges was mostly dark canals and white
lace antimacassars; she made me eat
moules for the first time, we both learned to drink
the amber Flemish beers and, thinking back,
there was a woman once, and she was tall.

There was a woman once and she was tall;
radiant, in an awkward way, with blue
eyes set too far apart, but her naked back
felt like silk, and her short-cropped, near-white
street waif hair looked swell behind a drink,
but what we liked to do the most was eat.

And what we liked to do the most was eat
our way across Manhattan, she was tall,
and life was good; the sex and food and drink
were good – weekends, sometimes, we’d hit the Blue
Note down on Hudson, hip crowd, black and white,
and we left something there we can’t get back.

And there was something there we can’t get back,
but what we liked to do the most was eat;
that time in Kyoto, the shoji screens all white,
there was a woman there, and she was tall;
grilled squid, the platter glazed dark brown and blue,
hot saké, served in little cups, the drink.

Hot saké, served in little cups, to drink,
and there was something there we can’t get back,
a sense of loss, unreachable and blue,
but what we liked we liked the most was eat.
There was a woman once, and she was tall,
her eyes were Baltic blue, her hair was white.

Her pretty eyes were blue, her hair was white.
Hot saké served in little cups to drink.
There was a woman once, and she was tall.
And something there was there we can’t get back.
But what we liked to do the most was eat.
Her hair white, white, so pretty eyes blue blue.

A woman once, go back, her eyes blue blue.
Her she so white, so tall, we loved drink eat.
Blue, white, back, drink, eat, eat, tall, tall tall tall.

You Are

I’m eating again.
This time quasi-ethnic hor d’ oeuvres
zapped into steaming tidbits of salty pastry
and dipping them into a salty mixture of salt
and herbs grown hydroponically in some lab
and sold to vast shifts of workers dressed
in white coats wearing latex gloves and hairnets
who stir things up in vats and package
portions of the salty potion to be sold
in sealed tubs marked non-this and non-that.

I reach for my drink but my drink is dry.
Salted. I am what I eat. My heart is high.


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I have loved this one by Annie since the first time I read it:

My lover bought me saffron
From a reputable grocer
And in my grinning innocence
I thought it brought us closer,
This meticulous attention
To my culinary needs
With the penises of crocuses
And promises of seeds.

But he has long been absent now
And I am growing sick
Of the limited potential
Of a vegetable dick.
So long has he been missing that
My store is almost gone
And I have used up all the little
Phalluses but one.

I seized it with a tweezers
And upon my palm it lay
With its propagating powder
That my breath could blow away
And I stumbled on a secret
That I never knew I knew;
I closed my eyes and made a wish
And pursed my lips and blew.

I have spiced the space between us
With a cloud of yellow dust
And my lover will be drawn to me
As magic says he must
And I will cook him kedgeree
And memory madras,
With the jissom of a blossom
As a little coup de grâce.

I will fill him up with fantasy
As far as I am able
And I will entertain him
From my place across the table
And look into his laughing face
And lose myself among
The golden ghosts of promises
Upon his silver tongue.

Oh, thank you, Walter.

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These are all sumptuous!

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This refers to a hotel in Barry, which appears in a book of mine (not poetry) in a chapter headed "The Worst Hotel in the West". The restaurant was a joy at a particularly traumatic time. The memory of this meal will stay with me forever.


Restaurant Remembered

A little place around the corner from
the grimy horror of the Vile Hotel.
That’s where we found ourselves the night we ran
from that establishment’s peculiar hell.
There we found comfort, kindness, and the sort
of food that counts as simple peasant fare;
that wraps a woolly cosy round the heart
and soothes the stomach with a soft “there, there”.
Steaming spaghetti, perfectly al dente,
dressed just with garlic and good olive oil,
served with a rather excellent Chianti;
an ambience the hellhole couldn’t spoil.
And when at last we left, we felt so well
we raised two fingers to the Vile Hotel.

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It’s Christmastime. I watch my grandchildren living in the time of wonder and see Christmas pouring over them in all the good ways.
My adolescent world was rocked one Christmas when I was taken to NYC to see Oliver! on stage. After, I wore out the needle memorizing the lyrics. One song scene that imprinted itself on me was Food Glorious Food.
Say what you will about Dickens, he could tell a story that stuck like Huck (as in Huckleberry Finn)

The entire score to Oliver is exhilarating. Here are the lyrics to Food Glorious Food:


Food Glorious Food

Is it worth the waiting for?
If we live 'til eighty four
All we ever get is gruel!
Ev'ry day we say our prayer --
Will they change the bill of fare?
Still we get the same old gruel!
There is not a crust, not a crumb can we find,
Can we beg, can we borrow, or cadge,
But there's nothing to stop us from getting a thrill
When we all close our eyes and imagine

Food, glorious food!
Hot sausage and mustard!
While we're in the mood --
Cold jelly and custard!
Pease pudding and saveloys!
What next is the question?
Rich gentlemen have it, boys --
In-di-gestion!

Food, glorious food!
We're anxious to try it.
Three banquets a day --
Our favourite diet!

Just picture a great big steak --
Fried, roasted or stewed.
Oh, food,
Wonderful food,
Marvellous food,
Glorious food.

Food, glorious food!
What is there more handsome?
Gulped, swallowed or chewed --
Still worth a king's ransom.
What is it we dream about?
What brings on a sigh?
Piled peaches and cream, about
Six feet high!

Food, glorious food!
Eat right through the menu.
Just loosen your belt
Two inches and then you
Work up a new appetite.
In this interlude --
The food,
Once again, food
Fabulous food,
Glorious food.

Food, glorious food!
Don't care what it looks like --
Burned!
Underdone!
Crude!
Don't care what the cook's like.
Just thinking of growing fat --
Our senses go reeling
One moment of knowing that
Full-up feeling!

Food, glorious food!
What wouldn't we give for
That extra bit more --
That's all that we live for
Why should we be fated to
Do nothing but brood
On food,
Magical food,
Wonderful food,
Marvellous food,
Fabulous food,


Beautiful food,
Glorious food!


(Merry Christmas everyone. Pull up a chair! Eat!)

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Things Go Better
 

That's great stuff, Jim!

I've always loved that in the third paragraph of Chapter 1 Huck Finn's sense of democracy is hinted at by his reaction to supper:

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it.
She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat
and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced
again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time.
When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to
wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the
victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--that
is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds
and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of
swaps around, and the things go better.

Cf. every meal Almanzo eats in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy

Un-sumptuous leftovers from my first year at Eratosphere:

To-phooey

Tofu, you're the Prince of Lies,
forever trying to disguise
yourself as chicken, pork, or beef.
I can’t suspend my disbelief.

Tofu, you’re the Prince of Lies.
Although you fool my husband’s eyes,
his tongue recoils from you to hiss,
“Honey, what the hell is this?”

Tofu, you’re the Prince of Lies:
“The kids will get a big surprise
when you reveal you’ve fed them tofu.”
Whose kids are those? Mine always knowfu.

Tofu, I’ll waste no more tries.
I’m giving up. I’m getting wise.
My household always will despise
you, tofu. You're the Prince of Lies.

In the same thread, grasshopper (a.k.a. Maz, or Margaret, or M.A. Griffiths) posted this. Decidedly more sumptuous.

Afters

Unpeel me slowly, like the fruit
you placed on a white plate
ready to accompany the wine,
or the cake, frilly-papered,
that you eyed while you ate
your salad and brown bread.

The apricot warms, ripening,
the cake crumbles in its case,
sugar crystallising and re-melting.
Taste me slowly. Let me melt
into the granules of your tongue
like icecream on shingle.

Make me zing like lemonade
after strawberries, like sherbet
on a rod of liquorice. Make me
flesh and sponge, sweet
and sour, savoured, swallowed,
assimilated. Make me muscle.

(Maz)

I came across this lip-smacking one the other day:

Everybody Made Soups
By Lisa Coffman


After it all, the events of the holidays,

the dinner tables passing like great ships,

everybody made soups for a while.

Cooked and cooked until the broth kept

the story of the onion, the weeping meat.

It was over, the year was spent, the new one

had yet to make its demands on us,

each day lay in the dark like a folded letter.

Then out of it all we made one final thing

out of the bounty that had not always filled us,

out of the ruined cathedral carcass of the turkey,

the limp celery chopped back into plenty,

the fish head, the spine. Out of the rejected,

the passed over, never the object of love.

It was as if all the pageantry had been for this:

the quiet after, the simmered light,

the soothing shapes our mouths made as we tasted.


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